DON'T SHOOT ON CHILDREN - VHS REVIEW

DON’T SHOOT ON CHILDREN (1978) is yet another crimeslime obscurity that turned up in English thanks (!) to the once-indispensable wonders of Greek videocassette.

As the opening credits unfold, various newspaper headlines flash across the screen, which detail the exploits of children throughout Italy, but this rather arresting credit sequence rapidly goes nowhere, and its relation to the rest of the film is only tenuous at best.  Instead, the film focuses its attention on Dino (Giancarlo Prete), who works at a ceramics factory trying to support his family, which includes his ailing father (Giampiero Albertini) – who has cancer after years of working in the mines – and his delinquent brother Marco (Marco Gelardini).  When Dino is laid-off from work, his father’s condition takes a turn for the worse and he is admitted to a hospital, but at the same time, he is also reacquainted with Beaumont (Italo Gasperini), an old friend who forces him to re-think the straight-and-narrow with a quick-scheme robbery. Meanwhile, in a not-so-interesting subplot, Marco and his buddies merely loiter in the streets getting up to no good – either smokin’ dope or buzzing aimlessly through the streets on their motorcycles – which only frustrates both his brother and father.  As expected, Beaumont’s plan begins to fall apart, and in a last-ditch effort, they take a group school kids and their (Antonella Lualdi) hostage.

Like his fellow compadre Demofilo Fidani (a.k.a. Miles Deem), director Gianni Crea directed several low-budget westerns, and like Fidani, Crea was somewhat out of his element when helming non-western fare.  DON’T SHOOT AT CHILDREN is his only crime film and, like his many lowly westerns, it’s also a decidedly threadbare production. Upon closer inspection, this rather poorly-paced effort has more in common with the overly melodramatic sceneggiata or cinema napoletana than your typical urban crime picture; Dino losing his job with his father in the hospital, and forced moralistic coda about one’s choices in life are typical plot points of any sceneggiata.

Future action star Giancarlo Prete (sometimes billed as Timothy Brent for much of his '80s output), tries in vain to inject some pathos into his role, but ultimately the tired screenplay – also by Crea – gives him very little to do.  Frequent crimeslime character actor Giampiero Albertini is also completely wasted as he lays in a hospital bed for most of the film’s duration while the usually captivating Eleonora Giorgi is given a throwaway part as Dino’s girlfriend.  Italo Gasperini, who also ‘starred’ alongside Richard Harrison in Mario Pinzauti’s rarely-seen CLOUZOT E C. CONTRO BORSALINO E C. (1977), is suitably scummy as the primary – and very manipulative – villain Beaumont, the pronunciation of whose name sounds more like “Bimbo” (!) than Beaumont in the clumsy English dubbing. 

This decades-old VHS tape from Video Alsen was, like most Greek videocassettes, in English with Greek subtitles and fullscreen, cropping Maurizio Centini’s photography from the intended 1.85:1 aspect ratio. This was also available on Italian language videocassette from New Pentax.